Ebook formatting isn’t easy. I know this. I put out my own book, Playing For Keeps, on Kindle, and the formatting has garnered some one star reviews on an otherwise popularly reviewed book.
I know this because I’ve seen horrible books put out on Lulu (this starts with a PDF, so I still count it as ebook formatting.) When my and JR Blackwell’s book Her Side was formatted by a professional, Daniel Solis, (more on that project in a later post), I had editors and authors at Balticon commenting how utterly awesome it looked. This didn’t feel like a backhanded compliment, “Wow, that looks good for a self-published book!” They really liked it. And it looks awesome because Daniel is a professional and knows how book formatting works.
I have a project I’m toying with self-publishing via ebook. I would like to format it in a way that, well, doesn’t suck. So I figured, I’ll get a book that tells me how to format. I may not be a pro, but at least I’ll know what to avoid.
I was horrified when I got to Amazon. I felt like I was being shouted at by plaid-clad used car dealers. MAKE MONEY ONLINE NOW WITH EBOOK PUBLISHING! WRITE AND PUBLISH FOR OUTRAGEOUS PROFIT.
Yesterday I was watching an episode of Carnivale and a lawman said to a carny, “I’ve never heard an honest man say the word, “Legit.”" Similarly, I have an alarm that goes off when someone is screaming MAKE MONEY MAKE MONEY. The people who usually scream that are needing you to give them money.
The final alarm bell came when half of the MAKE MONEY WITH EBOOKS (most of them outrageously priced paperbacks) are not available on the Amazon Kindle…
So. Does anyone have any advice on how I can learn ebook formatting that doesn’t suck?
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Go read through two sites:
Arachne Jericho’s blog, SpontaneousDerivation.com, has some good tutorials.
And there’s Liza Daly’s threepress.org, which is chock-full of lots and lots of useful info, including a very handy ePub Validation tool.
I just started using Sigil, an Open Source editor that lets you just cut and paste chapters into xhtml files and then binds them for you into epub when you save. It works on all platforms, Linux, Mac and Windows. If you know some CSS foo, you can modify that and make your text have indents and other formatting tweaks.
The Sigil web page has some basic tutorials on epub formating. Also, I second Pablo’s advice on the validation tool at Daly’s site.
I’d be happy to help. It’s not that hard, once you get the basics down, and I have a pretty foolproof method at this point…
I don’t know of any good books, but Ebook Formatting That Doesn’t Suck would certainly make a terrific title. Check out http://www.thebookdesigner.com. He has a few articles about e-books and layout, and you might be able to email him and pick his brains. I hope this helps.
Amazon has a free ebook about how to format books for kindle. I think I heard someplace that there’s a good blog from one of the guys who wrote one of the other popular kindle ebooks.
Have you tried asking in the kindle author’s forum on amazon, or in an author’s forum someplace like kindleboards?
Michael Stackpole recently released an ebook on epub. He’s at http://www.stormwolf.com
your description of the ‘Make Money’ books made me laugh, ruefully…I just downloaded http://stickyebooks.com/the-sticky-ebook-formula/ and it has some design tips, as well as an approach to making the books.
Another vote for Sigil, here… it’s what I currently use to produce the ebook version of Hub Magazine, after converting the pdf version using Calibre… bit of a long way around it but I’ve not had time to sort out the formatting issues in Adobe InDesign, yet…